


Jo-ing

by Aimanre



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Common Cold, Fluff, Gen, I have no idea what I'm doing, Mild Hurt/Comfort, No beta we die like mne, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Sibling Bonding, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, zuko and toph bond, zuko takes care of toph
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27529516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aimanre/pseuds/Aimanre
Summary: Toph battles a common cold. Zuko tries to help her sleep, Fire Nation-style.(aka the sibling bonding fic based on Indian lulling habits that NO ONE asked for)
Relationships: Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 4
Kudos: 116





	Jo-ing

**Author's Note:**

> Set in Ember Island

“What are you doing?” Toph asked. She heard rather than felt Sparky startle and say, “Huh?”, because she was lying on a proper bed (ew) so that meant no earth beneath her (double ew).

“I asked what are you doing,” she repeated, slowly, because Sparky could be strangely dumb about normal things. Toph had no idea how she got into this situation. Here she was, minding her own business, drifting off to sleep in her room in Ember Island. (Okay, maybe _drifting_ wasn’t the right word. More like, _trying desperately_ to sleep in spite of the hell cough wracking her, and lowkey plotting revenge on whichever spirit it was that had invented common cold. But hey, semantics!). Then suddenly, he crept into her room and kept tapping her arm and not explaining what the hell he was on about. “Well?”

“Uh.. I was jo-ing you?”

Toph put to use the one braincell she had left that wasn’t occupied with screaming at her stuffy nose, and tried to process what he’d just said. A beat passed. The one braincell gave up. “What?” she repeated.

“I was jo-ing you,” he said, with more confidence this time, apparently having regained his composure. “I know you can take care of yourself but your cold seems pretty bad and you seemed to have trouble sleeping. So I thought I could help. There is nothing wrong with letting people help you. All of us need help, that’s why we are a team after all and that’s nothing to be emba-”

“Back up there, Sunshine,” Toph interjected, before he could launch into a spiel that was channeling a strange mix of Uncle and Katara. Zuko often adopted the talking style of one of them when he was trying to have a _sensitive_ talk. Mostly because they had some tact, while he had none. “What do you mean by jo-ing?”

“Oh,” he paused, thankfully seeming to have lost the lecturing-wind in his motherhen-sails. “Uhh, do you not have it in the Earth Kingdom? It’s something people do in the Fire Nation to put their kids to sleep.”

“I’m not a baby!” Toph protested, immediately losing any tolerance she might have had for this jo-ing business. “I don’t need to be put to sleep!” She sniffled.

“It’s not just for babies, people do it to help each other sleep all the time!” Zuko hurried to clarify, seeming to have sensed the landmine in the conversation. Then his voice turned more somber, “My mom used to do it to me all the time. And later… sometimes Uncle used to do it too, when- when I couldn’t sleep easily.” His voice had grown very solemn and quiet by the end, like he was confessing a secret.

Uncle was a sensitive topic for Zuko right now, so Toph didn’t bite back anything sarcastic. Also, okay, her nose was irritatingly runny, making it hard to breathe when she tried to sleep on her back and running down in messy rivulets when she tried to sleep on her side. Pride aside, she really could use some help to sleep tonight. But she still wasn’t quite sold on this jo-ing thing.

“So to help me sleep, you are going to tap my arm all night?” she asked, dubiously. “How is that supposed to help?” In the Earth Kingdom, people did sane things to help their kids sleep, like singing lullabies or tucking them in. Trust the Fire Nation to make things weird.

“It’s not quite tapping, it’s more of a soothing sort of rhythmic stroking,” Zuko said, a little indignantly.

“You might want to hold back on some of your strength if that was meant to be soothing.”

“Ah, sorry,” he sounded abashed. “I’ve never done it before.” Something warm curled in Toph’s chest, because Zuko might have strange traditions and might be a dork, but he was trying to do something outside his comfort zone, because he cared about her. 

“Okay,” she consented, magnanimously.

“Okay?”

“If you want to pat me to sleep, be my guest,” she grabbed a long pillow and wedged it under her vertically so that her body was lying half on the pillow and half on the bed. It was something in between sleeping on her side and sleeping on her back, but the position gave a little relief to her nose. It also had the benefit of clearing some space for Zuko on the bed, offering her upraised side for jo-ing. “Hop on, sparkles.”

“I don’t really need-”

“I’m not letting you stand over me and stroke me like some weirdo,” Toph interrupted. “There’s enough place on this bed, come on.”

Zuko obliged thankfully, the bed shifted under his weight as he seemed to tentatively fidget for the best position. As she’d predicted, the bed was big enough to fit them both comfortably, and soon he was settled in beside her, emanating warmth like a human furnace. Toph wouldn’t admit it, but she’d gotten rather used to sleeping in a cuddle-pile in the past few months, so just the sound of him breathing beside her was comforting.

A wet cough seized her. When it passed, she blew her nose into the kerchief Katara had given her. Zuko seemed to take that as a cue to honor his jo-ing duties. She could sense him turning onto his side to face her, stretching out his left arm on the pillow above her to stroke her hair gently. His other hand moved rhythmically from her shoulder to her hand and up again, patting out a soothing beat. It was… surprisingly nice.

It reminded her of a street cat that used to sneak into her house when she was younger. Toph would feed her scraps and then stroke her fur lightly. Through the earth, Toph would feel the cat’s heartbeat slowing to a lazy beat, and would then feel the cat drift off under her ministrations, purring softly. Toph thought that if she could, she would be purring too right now.

“This is nice,” Toph commented, drowsily. The stroking was a happy distraction from all the other sickness-induced sensations. “Your mom used to do this to you every night?” Her mom had never even tucked her in, that was a task for servants after all.

“Not every night,” Zuko murmured. “But often, not even because I was sick. Just because.” That sounded very nice, his mom sounded nice. Toph wanted to ask him where she was now, but she was too relaxed to have a coherent conversation, so she just hummed noncommittally. He continued speaking after a beat, sounding a little embarrassed “Uh, actually, she used to do something else. You are supposed to say ‘jo’ out loud while stroking. That’s the reason it’s called jo-ing.”

“Well, don’t hold back on me then,” Toph breathed. She would’ve poked a little fun at the concept on a normal day, but his idea was a success till now, she was eager to embrace it in its totality. Besides, there was some blackmail potential to it. “I want the full experience.”

“Okay,” he said. Then, he started whispering the word jo in a sing-song way while stroking her arm. She realized that the rhythm of the strokes matched with his tune. A long stroke for a long jo and a short pat for a short jo. Before she knew it, she was lulled to sleep to the rhythm of “Joooo-jo”.

Her last coherent thought was, ‘ _Maybe Fire Nation traditions aren’t all bad’._

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure, as a kid that was raised on Jo-ing, let me tell you, there's nothing more soothing. After all the tucked-into-bed fluff I've read, it felt remiss not to introduce the characters to this brand of comfort. 
> 
> Because we in Tropical Countries would get toasted if we got tucked-in at nights.


End file.
